Hong Kong -LRB- CNN -RRB- -- Millions of Chinese netizens were prevented from accessing huge swathes of the Internet Tuesday , with many rerouted to a website owned by a U.S. company with ties to a group outlawed in China .

The China Internet Network Information Center -LRB- CNNIC -RRB- , a state-run department , blamed a `` malfunction in root servers '' that blocked access to top-level domain names in China such as . com and . net , according to a post on its Sina Weibo account , the Twitter-like micro-blogging service .

Security analysts quoted by the official Xinhua news agency said this could have been the result of a cyber attack by hackers -- though this has not been proved .

Dynamic Internet Technology -LRB- DIT -RRB- confirmed it owns the web address users were redirected to but denied any involvement . It said the company 's IP address is already blocked in China so users would have been met by a blank web page .

DIT President Bill Xia told CNN Wednesday that the Internet outage was likely caused by China 's own web censorship system , more widely known by its infamous `` Great Firewall '' moniker , which controls access to content on the Internet inside China deemed unsuitable .

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`` Their DNS hijacking system is used to redirect visits to certain websites to the wrong IP address , '' he said . `` But this time it was likely a temporary misconfiguration that affected all domain names . ''

According to its website , the U.S.-based company provides a range of services including anti-censorship solutions and has worked `` to provide web access to forbidden sites for Internet users in China , '' with the Epoch Times , a newspaper run by the Falun Gong , listed among its clients .

The Falun Gong is a spiritual movement that has been banned in China since 1999 , accused of `` spreading fallacies , hoodwinking people , inciting and creating disturbances and jeopardizing social stability . ''

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Access to domain names such as . com blocked Tuesday afternoon in China

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State media quoted security experts saying this could have been cyber attack

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Internet users rerouted to U.S.-owned website with links to banned group in China

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Dynamic Internet Technology said problem likely caused by China 's own censors